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Monday, January 14, 2013

The Bride Wore Black (January 17th and 18th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[THE BRIDE WORE BLACK screens Thursday January 17th at 9:00 pm and Friday January 18th at 7:40 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Francois Truffaut was one of the
architects of the French New Wave, a former film critic who turned to
filmmaking himself. Perhaps best known for such arthouse staples as
THE 400 BLOWS and JULES
AND JIM, he also had a soft
spot for Alfred Hitchcock and pulpy crime tales. It was in the spirit
of the latter that Truffaut made THE BRIDE WORE BLACK,
the story of a woman (Jeanne Moreau) tracking down and killing the
five men complicit in the killing of her husband on her wedding day.

Based
on a story by Cornell Woolrich (who wrote the novel Hitchcock based
REAR WINDON on, among
many others), it's pretty much the archetypal revenge tale. A
protagonist who has lost everything sets out looking to get an eye
for an eye, and while various logistical and moral complications
arise during that quest, ultimately nothing will get in their way. That's about all there is to it, and while it might seem a premise more suited for drive-in or grindhouse fodder, it's always interesting to see what a more "serious" filmmaker can do with such material.

Critics
of the time hated THE BRIDE WORE BLACK. Truffaut himself later said they were right,
and that this was the one film of his he'd most like to go back and
change. Frankly it's not hard to see why – tonally the film is
always a little bit off, with more than a few awkward acting moments,
a muddled visual style, and Bernard Herrmann's insistent score adding
a further level of unintended camp to the proceedings while
simultaneously raising the specter of Hitchcock and inviting
comparisons in which BRIDE
could only come up short. But even if THE BRIDE WORE BLACK
is no masterpiece, it's still a
solidly entertaining movie that managed to influence countless other
revenge films in its wake. 3 out of 4 stars.